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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Of course, outsiders expect insanity in fringe religions. But Sai Baba isn't just any cult leader. Because he isn't well known in America, it's hard to convey the awesome power he has in India. In addition to the droves of foreigners who flock to see him, Sai Baba's acolytes include the cream of India's elite. Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee is a devotee, as is former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. A 1993 article in the Times of India counts among the guru's followers "governors, chief ministers, assorted politicians, business tycoons, newspaper magnates, jurists, sportsmen, academics and, yes, even scientists."
Even if you don't believe in the miracles he's credited with -- resurrections, faith healings, materializations -- his phenomenal popularity in India is easy to understand. Just outside Puttaparthi is an enormous hospital he helped build that provides free cardiology, optometry and nephrology care to all comers. It was funded in part by a $20 million donation from Isaac Tigrett, co-founder of the Hard Rock Café. The pink façade looks like a cross between a Mogul palace and a wedding cake. One enters into a domed hall with marble floors resplendent with images of Sai Baba and other deities -- Jesus on the cross, the Buddha, the elephant-headed god Ganesh. Yet for all the architecture's Las Vegas excess, especially in a country where many can't afford even rudimentary medical care, the hospital claims impressive figures: 10,594 free cardiac surgeries, 9,090 kidney operations, 382,328 outpatient consultations.
A host of other charity projects has also won Sai Baba favor with the masses. One of his projects installed 2,500-liter cisterns in several villages in Andhra Pradesh. Indian children who might otherwise never have access to higher education covet spots in his free colleges. Though rumors of chicanery and worse swirl around all these ventures, even Sai Baba's critics admit that he has eased some of the region's suffering. "God or a fraud, no one doubts the good work done by the Sai organization," wrote the Illustrated Weekly of India.
All this helps explain why there has never been any official action against Sai Baba in India, despite the dozens of ex-believers who insist that his claims to divinity mask a wholly human craving for the bodies of the ashram's young men and boys. The evidence is strong that Sai Baba uses his power to get in his followers' pants. It's also strong that life is slightly less brutal for lots of poor Indians because he exists. Some call him a saint and some call him a lecher. Possibly he's something of both.
The stories about Sai Baba's sexual misconduct are all remarkably similar. "During my 'private audiences' with Sai Baba, Sai Baba used to touch my private parts and regularly massage my private parts, indicating that this was for spiritual purposes," wrote Dutchman Hans de Kraker in a letter sent to French journalist Virginie Saurel. In December 1996, when de Kraker was 24, Sai Baba allegedly asked him to perform oral sex: "He grabbed my head and pushed it into his groin area. He made moaning sounds," de Kraker wrote. "As soon as he took the pressure off my head and I lifted my head, Sai Baba lifted his dress and presented me a semi-erect member, telling me that this was my good luck chance, and jousted his hips towards my face." When de Kraker reported to others what had happened, he was thrown out of the ashram.
American Jed Geyerhahn, who was 16 when Sai Baba started coming on to him, echoes de Kraker's account: "Each time I saw Baba, his hand would gradually make more prominent connections to my groin." The stories are endless, and endlessly alike, concerning mostly boys and men from their midteens to their mid-20s.
They're not new, either. In 1970, Tal Brooke published a book called "Lord of the Air," later renamed "Avatar of Night," a vivid, detailed account of his mind-blowing days as a questing young acolyte and his total disillusionment on learning of his guru's sexual rapacity. Yet it's only recently, thanks in large part to the Internet, that various victims, their parents and defecting officials from within the Sai Organization have banded together to direct the energy they once poured into worshiping their master toward bringing the man down.
It all started with a document called "The Findings," published in late 2000 by long-term devotees David and Faye Bailey, whose marriage was arranged by Sai Baba. Part of the nearly 20,000-word piece is given over to evidence that Sai Baba fakes his materializations and doesn't magically heal the sick -- revelations that seem self-evident to nonbelievers but provoke fierce debate in devotee circles and blazing headlines in the Indian press.
Most of "The Findings" consists of testimony of sexual harassment and sexual abuse. "Whilst still at the ashram, the worst thing for me -- as a mother of sons -- occurred when a young man, a college student, came to our room, to plead with David, 'Please Sir, do something to stop him sexually abusing us,'" Faye writes. "These sons of devotees, unable to bear their untenable position of being unwilling participants in a paedophile situation any longer, yet unable to share this with their parents because they would be disbelieved, placed their trust in David; a trust which had built over his five years as a visiting professor of music to the Sai college." These pleas eroded the Baileys' faith and finally made them go public.
Since then, the movement against Sai Baba has been snowballing. In the past few months, ex-devotees have contacted the FBI, Interpol, the Indian Supreme Court and a host of other agencies, hoping for help in their battle against the guru. A California man named Glen Meloy, who spent 26 years as a Sai devotee, is trying to organize a class-action lawsuit against Sai Organization leaders in America, modeled on the one recently launched against the Hare Krishnas.
His faith was shattered when he was shown excerpts from the diary of his close friend's 15-year-old son, detailing several incidents of molestation. The child of devotees, the boy had been raised to worship Sai Baba as God, and obliged when the master reportedly ordered his disciple to suck his penis. "You've got all these kids who are scared to death to do anything that will do disrespect to their parents, in a room with someone they believe to be the creator of the whole universe," said Meloy, his voice choked with fury. "This isn't just any child abuse; this is God himself claiming to do this."
